The Physical Basis of Electronics

"For many years we have been accustomed to regard the development of electronics as an exponential process. Now, however, a much more impressive phenomenon can be dis- cerned: it looks as if electronics is no longer content to be a branch of the science of electricity. We are witnesses today of an enormous "electronic revolution", in which what is traditionally regarded as electricity plays only a subsidiary part.
A. Ducrocq
(in ELECTRONIQUE INDUSTRIELLE, Oct. 1961)
The education of the electronics engineer (or technician) of tomorrow may be divided into three stages: the technologieal, the physical, and the mathe- matical. In the first of these stages, the student should be introduced directly to the practical aspects of electronics (circuitry, measuring techniques) in such a way as to arouse in hirn real enthusiasm for the subject. This should lead hirn to ask spontaneously about the why and the wherefore of the many "miracles" he has come into contact with. It is the purpose of the "physical stage" to answer these questions in a systematic way by showing the relation- ships between the phenomena he has observed, and leading up to others still unknown to hirn, and in particular to show the qualitative and quantitative effects of various factors on these phenomena.
This brings us to the third stage, in which these effects are laid down in precise mathematical form. This book is intended as a contribution to the second of these three stages. The quotation given above clearly reflects the enormous increase now taking place in the amount of information wh ich must be taken in by the student in the first stage, and the tendency to "philosophizing" wh ich may be obser- ved in many electronics engineers throughout the world *), who feel a need to impose some kind of order on this flood of facts, both for their own sake and for that of the student of electronics.